Captain Blood gets a dressing down from the judge.

**

Sir James Barry’s Speech at the Trial of Captain Blood **

Sir James Parry of High Street, Dublin (Gilbert’s’ Hist.’), born 1603, became very eminent in the profession of the Law; was Recorder of the city of Dublin; 6 October 1629 made Serjeant-at-Law; 5 August 1634 appointed second Baron of the Exchequer (Smyth’s ‘Law Officers of Ireland ’), and honoured with the title of Knighthood; 7 July 1659 was chosen Chairman of the Convention, which then met in Dublin, and proceeded to transact business, notwithstanding that orders came from the Council of State in England for their dissolution, in contempt of which orders they asserted their liberty and independency of England, declared their detestation of the King’s murder, and of the proceedings of the High Court of Justice; and 12 March 1660 published a declaration for a full and free Parliament and the readmission of** the secluded members into the Parliament of England; 19 March 1660 he was appointed one of the Commissioners for executing his Majesty’s Declaration of 30 November 1659 for the settlement of Ireland 17 November; same year he was promoted to be Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and the King [Charles II.], **“taking into his Princely consideration the many good and acceptable services performed by his trusty and well-beloved subject, Sir James Barry, Knt., to his late royal father, and his constant and eminent loyalty to himself, thought fit to bestow upon him a lasting mark of his favour, and such as might be transmitted to posterity;” and therefore by Privy Seal, dated at Whitehall 18 December 1660, and by Patent, dated 8 February 1661, creating him “Baron Barry” of Santry, in the Co. Dublin.

He took his seat in the House of Peers 8 May 1661, and 5 December same year was joined with the Lord Primate [John Bramhall, D.D.] and the Archbishop of Dublin [Thomas Margetson, D.D.] to wait upon the Lords Justices of Ire] and “to desire their Lordships would supplicate his Majesty that the late Usurper’s coin may be continued current in this kingdom for some certain time, not exceeding one year to come; and also that there might be a mint erected in this kingdom as well as for new-stamping of the said coin, as other bullion, and that the concurrence of the Commons be desired herein.” (Lords’ Journals, i. 283.)

6 November 1662 the King issued his order to the following effect :-“Whereas we are informed that upon the augmentation of the salaries of our judges there *[i.e. *Ireland], our Lord Chief Justice of our Court of Chief Place hath not had an equal part of our favour in that particular, having had less of increase than any other of the judges, the proportions by which we proceeded being considered, we have thought fit hereby to declare that it was not our intention to cast any shadow of diminution, either upon that place, well knowing how much it concerneth us to preserve the same in its ancient dignity and lustre, or upon the person who now enjoys it, being one who hath highly merited from us, both by his faithful services performed by him to our dear father, of glorious memory, and by his eminent loyalty to us, and we do therefore authorize and require you to give prudent order to Arthur, Earl of Anglesey, our Vice-Treasurer, out of our revenue there to pay to James, Lord Baron Barry of Santry, our Chief Justice of our Court of Chief Place there, £200 a year over and above the sum allowed unto him by the said establishment.” (Smith’s ‘Law Officers of Ireland.’)

The following speech of this nobleman was kindly supplied to me by John P Prendergast, Esq., author of ‘The Cromwellian Settlements in Ireland;’ it was delivered at the trial of Colonels Edward Thomas Blood, Jephson, and others, for a plot to seize the Castle of Dublin in May 1663, when the Judge was delivering sentence:-

“Gentlemen, I am very sorry to see persons of your quality stand in that place… But before I proceed to that judgment, I think it will he necessary that you should see your offence in all the dimensions of it. That, Gentlemen, which doth so much aggravate your offence is, that you have done all this without any provocation. There was no public injury offered. Then, why should you attempt this? What would you enjoy? Have you not the liberty of your religion? Is not the Protestant religion that which his Majesty professes? Is there any other religion in the kingdom that hath any countenance? Are not all other religions driven into corners, and some not permitted to rest there? You say that you would have the Protestant religion in purity. I may say that you have it in purity, and in as great, as any people in the whole world. But you would have it with a new limitation; you would have it according to the Covenant. I find that the Protestant religion is in the Scriptures; but do you find that limitation in the Scriptures ‘according to the Covenant.’ I find no such thing there that was added by men of later times; We know that the Covenant is destructive to the laws of the laud, that it hath many dark, and dangerous, and contradictory expressions in it, and we cannot but remember what fruits it hath brought forth.

“What would you next have? The benefit of the Laws? Was that denied you? . . Can any man give an instance of a letter from his Majesty or the Lord Lieutenant directed to any judge to delay or obstruct justice? I am sure there has come none to this Court. The hearing of causes between party and party, that formerly has been practised at the Council Board, that has been sparingly done, if at all.

“You were so far from injury that there were many favours conferred upon you, and that aggravates. The King was entitled to all the forfeited land in Ireland. All that was freely bestowed upon you and others. The King reserved little to himself, but the satisfaction of contenting all interests. For the securing of those lands to you, the King published a Declaration, and that seemed to satisfy all. Upon that you desired an Act of Parliament to be passed, and some of you were of the House. And then you had Commissioners, and you seemed to be satisfied with them. There was the King’s favour in giving and then in forgiving; when you had run into the dangers of the law, he holds forth an Act of Oblivion. But admit that there was any injury done [though I know not of any], what is the way or redress of grievances? I can tell you. The old way of law, Bracton (a writer on the Laws of England in the reign of Edward I., 1272-1307))says. There was no taking up of arms or surprising of castles. If you did not like that way of petition, was there not a Parliament sitting… You take a new way. You will do it with a vengeance, and you must raise an army! By the Law of God in the Old Testament but to resist the Supreme Magistrate was death; by that of the New it is no less than damnation. In both you have the rebel’s reward, death and damnation. Christ and His Apostles did preach and practise obedience to Magistrates. The Early Christians preached the same doctrine, and they practised it accordingly. What is the doctrine of Christ? Though you were under persecution (which you were far from), if they persecute you in one city fly unto another. No remedy but flight. It was observed that that practice of the Ancient Christians was the great means of propagating the Gospel. They knew not the new way of propagating religion by the sword. They left that to Mahomet.

“It would be tedious in me, Gentlemen, to make a long homily here against disobedience or the sin of rebellion. You have excellent exhortations in the ‘Book of Homilies’ to that purpose I would they had been read in that place, where you, Mr. Thompson, complained that you had no ministers; your ministers told you they would have a day set apart for seeking God. It was such a prayer as he in the poet makes to his goddess-

Da mihi fallere - da justum sanctumque videri.

“These men have much to answer for. You see the hand of Divine revenge upon one of those persons. It is an offence against the king, such a king, that he seems to have been dropped from Heaven among you. It was against such a king, such a giving and forgiving king as never any people had. ‘Caesar dando et condonando immortalem gloriam adeptus est.’ You see the murderers of his father had the benefit of the law, and are some of them living to this day; and but a few were put to death for those horrible confusions that went beyond the examples of former times.

“You have sinned against your own country. You are all Englishmen, and I am sorry that I must say so, that Englishmen should design the destroying of the English Government. Who will believe it? It is a sin against this country, this poor country, which God hath so lately afflicted with all His woes. You yourselves have been witnesses of the miseries of it. And now that we are come to some condition of peace, and that we had an Act of Parliament for the Settlement of Ireland, to break out in such a time as this is, and to carry us back to those miseries I There is a strange fate hangs over this country, and it is observed by some that there never was anything intended for the good of Ireland, but something did obstruct it. It seems that old prophecy must be fulfilled that Ireland shall be reformed ‘Vix paulo ante diem judicii.’

“What you have done is a sin against all mankind. They are enemies to mankind who are enemies to them by whom order and peace is kept in mankind, and without them there would be in mankind nought but confusion. ‘Generale pactum est societatis humane obedire regibus,’ so St. Augustine. Without that order, what is a city but ‘Confusa turba ubi nemo audit neminem’?

“Gentlemen, I fear I have troubled you too long. I know not whether this was not a great motive to this business, that there are some among you who love to fish in troubled waters, and who are of the humour of those men of whom the historian makes mention, ‘Quibus quieta movere magna merces videbatur,’ that think they have done God good service when they have put things that were in order into confusion. Read all histories, sacred and profane, all books of law and records, and you shall ever find that they who were given to change, their own change came suddenly upon them; and that a sad change too! You need go no further than the Holv Story. There you shall see some of them hanged and their heart opened, being yet alive. So was Absalom. And their bowels plucked out to make them like Judas. Some their head stricken off. So was Sheba. Some quartered and their hands and heads set upon poles, that the ravens might pluck out their eyes, as Baana and Rechab. For all the punishments of traitors as now they are in use with us; they may seem to have been collected and drawn together from those several examples that stand in the Book of God.

“May all the enemies of my lord the King, and all that rise up against him to do him hurt, be as those men were, and as you are like to be by the judgment of the Court, which now remains to be pronounced against you.” (Carte Papers, vol. lix., p.89, etc.)

Colonol Blood,* the ringleader, escaped into England (Hume’s ‘English History’), but four of the others were executed. (Ware.)

(‘History and Description of Santry and Cloghran Parishes, Co. Dublin’, by B. W. Adams, DD. Published 1883 by Mitchell and Hughes, 140 Wardour Street, W.)

[Thomas Blood (1618-1680) was an Irish adventurer who also attempted to assassinate the Duke of Ormonde in 1670 - and the following year almost succeeded in stealing the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.]

General Contents. .